On Thursday, news broke that the Veterans Equal Access Amendment had been stripped from the House Conference Report of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017. The provision was removed from the conference version of the bill, despite passing in the Senate Appropriations Committee 20-9, and on the House floor 233-189. The removal of an amendment to an appropriations bill that has been approved in both chambers is unprecedented and defies explanation.

“Blocking this amendment at the conference committee stage is an assault on democracy and those Americans who risked their lives and health to defend it,” said Michael Liszewski, Government Affairs Director of Americans for Safe Access (ASA). “It’s shocking that House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers would allow a veterans health care provision that won by wide margins in a Senate committee and on the House floor to be stripped from the bill behind closed doors.”

After showing that people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder have an imbalance in their endocannabinoid system, Alexander Neumeister, then the director of the molecular imaging program in the Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology at NYU School of Medicine, got the go-ahead from NYU, and the funding from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, to run a clinical trial on a poorly understood class of drugs known as FAAH inhibitors.